Destiny: Darkest Horizon
by rowantheunburnt
Summary: Humanity hangs by a thread, surrounded by Darkness that swells in the empty void around Earth and beyond. However, a courageous force is fighting to protect humanity in these dark times. One Guardian, along with his companions, has the power to help overcome terrible threats that threaten to bring an end to humanity itself.
1. Prologue

A body.

An empty corpse where light has no presence.

That is what you are. That is what you have been for many years. An empty vessel trapped in an eternity of darkness and emptiness never to be freed.

Until now.

A light will burn away the nothingness. A great light that will ignite all darkness and forge freedom. _The_ Light.

This Light, which is the essence of life itself, will extinguish everything that opposes it. Everything that opposes you and me. I am the Voice who is adorned in pure Light, but the Darkness opposes me still.

Us. All of us, humanity and its allies, fight the Darkness to keep our Light - our life - safe.

Always, until the day we push it back into the deep abyss of the void itself. It will struggle, retaliate, as is the nature of a great evil, but it cannot be released from its inevitable and inescapable end that we will deliver.

Lights always burn away darkness. It illuminates everything and chases shadows from their pits. Even the seemingly endless sea that is space can be irradiated.

It shone brightly for us, our people, once. It painted the blackness of our solar system gold. Did you know?

With help from a great conductor of Light, our people colonised worlds that were once thought to be uninhabitable. In mere years, cities had sprung up from the ashes of unknown, alien landscapes. To us, everything that seemed impossible became entirely the opposite. That was until forces of Darkness came and crushed the golden brilliance that was embedded in our solar system, our lives.

Death, turmoil, Darkness. These are the things that our people faced, that we still face.

Our great beacon of Light was doused. It fell dormant.

It was all gone in what seemed like an instant. It all vanished in the blink of an ungodly eye. Our prosperity was quelled, just like that.

Astonishingly, some of us endured the terrible Collapse of our once expanding civilisation to begin anew amidst the smoking ruins of Earth. That dormant Light still safeguarding our new, dawning power. It acts as a ward that protects our people's final sanctuary.

Now, hope is emerging from the cracks in our shattered lives. Valiant and courageous warriors now venture out beyond the horizon of our last safe sanctuary. Protectors whose Light shines bright in these our darkest hours.

Guardians who will defend all that we hold so dear.

Do you see now?

Danger is rife in this world; in the depths of every world that hangs in the void. Our own solar system is no safe haven. Relentless enemies knock at our door, but we will not let them through. We will strike them down. It is all we can do. It is the only option that remains for us. This has been our only options for too many long years.

It is time to bring an abrupt end to this onslaught.

Can you hear me now? Can you hear my voice? Or has the Darkness deafened you?

You can bestow your trust in me. In the Light. I will breathe life into your desolate soul, as I have many others.

Guardians.

You were all empty eyed corpses when the Light, hidden in the shells of Ghosts, came to you. Ancient bones given new life in the interest of protecting the Light from the Dark.

And now, it is time for you to wake from your long slumber to join your brothers and sisters in war. To join your fellow Guardians in this terrible conflict.

Death no longer clings to you. You are released from its grasp. Adjust your eyes, Raymond Jonathan O'Dare, to the Light that is the saviour of us all.

But wait, Guardian. What was the cause of this slumber that has consumed you for centuries? Death, of course, but whose hand was it? Terror, fear. The enemies you once faced may have had a part to play in your initial demise but they are no longer your enemies. The terrible enemies that we face now are your only enemies.

You should not hear of your past from me; it is for you to remember. Do not worry, you will remember everything about who you once were as time progresses.

It is time to return to your body once more. It is time for the Light to sing in you again.

Guardian, it is time to burn the Darkness clean.


	2. Chapter 1

Screams.

Cries for mothers, fathers, God. Then a voice, _adorned in light_ , spoke quickly through the brief darkness.

Suddenly, they vanished. Every scream, every cry for comfort and safety, every prayer. Every voice. All gone. In an instant, it was all just gone. And everything had aged in what felt like a second. Everything had crumbled, disintegrated, died.

He could feel the warm wind... _Feel_ the warmth! His senses were intact. How were his senses intact? He was dead, wasn't he? Killed by a shelling that had stripped the flesh from his bones.

He could hear a voice breaking through the silence. A voice. The wind. The sound of birds warbling in a distant ensemble. A lone tree, kissed by the sun and its heat, sang in the breeze.

He could _hear_.

Everything was slowly returning to him. Every sense returning as if they had simply disappeared for a brief moment in a large space of time.

His eyes flicked open. His vision was a blur, but it was steadily regaining focus. All he could see was an evening sky above him, reddening with the dusk. He was lying on his back, he realised, in a bed of tall grass.

He moved his fingers as if he were grasping at some invisible object. He blinked slowly, then closed his eyes. He looked into his eyelids where he could only see darkness. He opened them again to see the same red sky ever so slowly coming into focus.

That voice was still droning on as his eyesight and hearing became ever sharper. The words were clearer, but they weren't... human words. They were mechanical. They sounded as if they had emotion, thought, but he could hear the robotic elements in each word that was said. They may have been robotic, but they sounded like a woman's words.

He could only just understand what was being said. His senses were growing stronger still.

"Can it be?" He heard the strange voice say.

A small floating object whirred into view. "Here you are," the strange object said. It sounded pleased.

He had to squint in order to see it properly. It had the shape of a four-pointed star with what he assumed to be a central eye. The glowing, blue diamond-shaped eye flitted about in its socket, examining him. He had no idea what this thing was.

Suddenly, he felt nauseous. Something was roiling deep inside that made him feel awful.

Each individual point on the little machine separated from the eye and levitated around it, creating a transparent blue orb that surrounded the entire floating being.

He clenched his jaw, a flash of blue light washed over him; his eyes fell shut, and he fell unconscious.

His dreams came back. And with them the screaming.

His men. His platoon. All dead. Why wasn't he dead? He _should_ be dead. He needed to be with his men. The enemy cheered as they fell, as their blood soaked the grass. At least, he thought they cheered. The grass slowly turned crimson in colour as the sound of gunfire and explosions blurred into silence as he took his last breath.

"Breathe."

His wife, his beautiful wife, with her big blue eyes and wide smile, flashed through his mind, what he believed to be his final thought. Her hands slowly and gently caressed her bloated belly. She carried his son. His son would have no father.

His son never did have his father. Yet, somehow, _he_ was breathing _now_. Somehow, he knew that his son had been long dead, and that he, his son's father, was somehow still alive far in the future. But he didn't feel old.

He didn't want to, but he could feel himself returning from oblivion. His breathing became manic as his eyes jolted open. He sat bolt upright and cradled his head in his hands.

"Guardian?" There it was again. The voice. That mechanical woman's voice. It was right here with him. "Just breathe, it's okay."

"Maria?" He screamed, pulling his hands away from his face, his expression and tone hysterical.

"You can call me that if you really want to, Guardian." His vision snapped to the floating robot beside him. It's four points kept moving ever so slightly around its central eye. The blue eye blinked as it looked at him.

"What the hell are you?" He whispered. His bloodshot eyes were wide open and his head was overflowing with questions.

"I'm a Ghost." It paused. A strange, machine-like noise filled the short silence as it looked on at him, and then it spoke again. "I'm _your_ Ghost, actually." It then seemed to scan the area around them with its single eye.

"Ghost..." He was completely lost for words. What was this thing? What kind of technology is _this_? "Some kind of U.S. government machine or something?" It said nothing but looked on at him. "An orb that speaks really the best they could come up with? Though the floating is pretty good, I'll give 'em that."

He looked around for someone. Anyone. But as his eyes scoured the surrounding environment, he saw nothing but green, exotic forestland. There were no USAF aircraft engines screaming through the sky. No gunfire tearing up the tranquility. He was awestruck by the silence.

He wasn't used to the quiet.

"Is it over?" A wave of relief washed over him.

"Is what over?" The machine asked, sounding unsure.

"The war! Is it over? How am I alive?" He demanded, his attitude brimming with zeal.

The floating eye looked deeply into his own gaze. It blinked. A mechanical whirring sound emanated from its small body, and then it spoke. "Oh, I remember now," it began rather coolly. "Apologies. Well, your war is over. But now something else has pushed all of you to the brink of extinction. Look at all of this;" it turned from him, "civilisation, as you knew it, is gone. Pushed back to one single place. And I have to get you back to that one place in one piece, Guardian."

 _Extinction_! He wanted to know what this thing meant by that. _His_ war?

Every other word blew past him like the wind that made the trees sing. Only the words _his war_ and the _brink of extinction_ were heard by his ears. He formed the shape of the robot's words with his lips to try and make sense of the situation as his vision scoured the vacant environment.

His attention returned to this 'Ghost'. "Where am I?" He said finally, his voice weak.

"Vietnam. Or what was once Vietnam." He was still here. That didn't surprise him.

"How long have I been gone?"

"Centuries. You've been gone a very, very long time, Guardian. And much has changed."

His heart stopped for a moment. His son would have lived and died long before he, his father even knew that he had been born.

"How?" He was astounded, shocked. "You're shitting me... Whatever you are. You're shitting me."

"I know you have a lot of questions, but we can't stay here. It's not safe." The machine turned from him and flew on ahead.

He got to his feet. He expected to feel a spike of pain surge through his body, but he felt nothing. He was astonished by everything that had happened in these last few moments. He was alive. How? He did not know. He couldn't fathom any of it. How did he survive for this long out here? Maybe it was all some simulation or trick. He couldn't bare to believe that his life, the war, was all simply a hoax.

"Did the Vietnam War even happen?" He had to know. "This is just some clever trick or something, right? How am I even alive? I remember dying. I remember my men dying right here!"

The small machine circled in the air to face him. "It happened. And you did die. But now you're alive."

"How?" He asked, bitterly.

It just hovered there, it's single blue eye shifting, staring. After a brief silence it said, "You'll see." It then just turned around and flew off, expecting him to follow. "Come on then, it's not safe, remember?"

He tried to find evidence of warfare around him as he followed, but there was nothing but grass and trees. Just the endless exotic green scenery rolling off into the distance in every direction.

He began to sweat as the heat smothered his body. He was still wearing his olive coloured fatigue shirt, but it was torn and ragged. He was surprised that his jungle uniform had even stayed in one piece after these last apparent hundred odd years. He thought that it would have rotted away completely, just like he should have. But, his clothes were his last thought; how was _he_ still in one piece?

He grew impatient as the relentless heat continued to bombard his skin.

"Okay," he pushed tendrils of long grass aside as he tried to keep up with the small robot, "cut the crap; what the hell are you? You an alien or something?" He sneered, unsure of whether he was joking or not. He felt an insect brush against his cheek and he slapped his face. He missed it.

"Not quite. I am and I am not. I wasn't made by your kind, but I was made here." It sounded sincere, maybe slightly amused, but it didn't seem as if it was trying to fool him. He laughed at the lack of information.

"What are you called then?"

"I'm a Ghost. Your Ghost."

He wasn't content with just that. He wanted to know what it really was. But he couldn't bring himself to pry. The day was terribly hot and he felt lost. Not just physically lost, but lost in time, lost in himself. Maybe he was just losing his mind entirely.

"So, should I call you 'she'? Because of the voice." He felt calmer now. All he could do was just come to terms with it for now. What else could he do? He brushed aside more vegetation as he pushed on. The Ghost was just a small, levitating white dot on a canvas of green. Advanced technology such as this Ghost seemed largely out of place here.

"Call me what you want, Guardian. I don't mind."

"Why do you keep calling me that? I'm a marine. A U.S. Marine: Marine Corps sniper Raymond O'Dare."

"You're not a marine anymore. You're a Guardian now. And I'm your Ghost, Guardian." It sounded amused, again.

They were deep in a Vietnamese forest now. A vast green canopy shielded the sky from Raymond's vision as he walked on. Pillars of evening light streamed down through the gaps in the thousands of leaves. The forest seemed to have just sprang up around him. He must have 'died' at a high vantage point above the canopy.

He passed a langsat tree. Bunches of orange fruit grew scattered about its many branches. He wasn't hungry, but he was thirsty. Parched, in fact. It felt as if the day's heat had scorched his entire body of moisture.

"Damn this heat," Raymond groaned.

"Over here," the Ghost's voice was raised from on ahead, "water."

He wiped sweat from his brow and adjusted his ears to the soft sound of water patting stone. A stream. Raymond sprinted forward, and there it was, lapping at his tattered boots. He knelt down and scooped fistfuls of fresh, cool water up to his mouth. He slurped it loudly. Water didn't generally have any noticeable taste, but it did now. It was gorgeous.

"Drink what you can," his strange companion began. "You'll need to stay hydrated; we can't get stuck out here in this superheated forest without you having enough water."

Raymond did as it suggested; he guzzled the water until he could hold in no more. He concluded the liquid feast by splashing his face. He got to his feet, his skin soaked with cool water rather than sweat.

"Let's get going," it said.

"Anything to get out of this green sweat-box," he pressed.

It felt as if he had been aimlessly traipsing through the forest for far too long. The heat deviously extended the hours into what felt like days. The sky was still red from what he could see between the gaps in the seemingly endless canopy. It was still evening by the looks of things. The insects had already begun to chirp their nighttime song in one long chorus.

"Do you know where we're going?" He asked the Ghost in a rather dry tone. "I swear to god I've seen that fruit tree before."

"Of course I know where we're going." It remarked humorously. "There are many fruit trees in this jungle. You're going to have to put some faith in me, Guardian. We're almost out of here."

"I can't put my faith in some floating ball who says I've been dead for hundreds of years."

"Well, if you want to survive, you're going to have to put your faith in _this_ floating ball. Any other floating ball would get you killed, I'm sure of it," the Ghost replied. Raymond couldn't help but crack a slight smile at the Ghost's attempts at humouring itself.

But, to his surprise, the Ghost was right. The dense sea of vegetation that surrounded them began to thin out. He could see the sun now; it was low, large and a deep orange, sinking below the rolling hills in the distance. The sky was a vivid tapestry of colour above them.

Now that the trees were becoming increasingly scarce in his forward vision, Raymond saw something that snatched the breath from his chest.

Hạ Long City. The capital of the Quảng Ninh province of Vietnam.

It sat in the distance, not too far from the higher vantage point at which he stood. It was nothing like how he remembered it. The buildings were in ruin. It was all in ruin. The jungles around the crumbling, seemingly ancient city had already consumed it. The tallest buildings that still stood were like vertical gardens climbing into the sky. The red evening light that shone from behind the broken civilisation looked as if someone had painted the sky with blood. The buildings were the bones.

The voice of the Ghost brought him out of his fixation on the distant decaying city. "Do you believe me now? You've been gone a long time."

"What happened?" Raymond's voice was almost a whisper. He didn't want to believe any of it.

"The Collapse happened. Then time slowly broke down what remained." The Ghost's voice became disheartened. "You'll be seeing much more of this soon. Humanity has lost too much to the Darkness."

Even buildings that Raymond couldn't recognise from his fragmented memories of the Vietnam War were there, crumbling, next to nothing. It was as if he was looking down at some mass graveyard; each and every building a tombstone.

"Come on. Who knows what may be lurking around here," the Ghost said softly.

It was hard for him to ignore the vision of what was once Hạ Long. All the while he and his companion descended the tree-choked hills and slopes, the image of the crumbling city never left his mind. Raymond partly remembered Hạ Long from during the war, but this was an entirely different level of terror.

The war did scare him, of course, but to see, to know, that civilisation had become nothing but dust in the wind scared him far more. He could easily ignore fear, but now it felt as if fear itself was perching on his shoulder like an infernal stone gargoyle looming over him.

"It's hard to accept," he heard the Ghost begin, "but it'll get easier. When you get to the City, it'll be easier."

"Where are you planning on taking me here?"

"Like I said; the City. But first, we have to get to Hạ Long Bay."

The Bay; it was a watery maze of over seven hundred limestone islets scattered about the shallow waters. He could remember it now. Each islet had a cap of green vegetation that cloaked the stone surfaces, and almost every one had a network of caves, both above and below the water table, that were etched into their rocky faces. He managed to remember one evening, when the sounds of war were minimal, how the setting sun dyed the water pink and orange and how the long black shadows cast by the islets looked like dark oily fingers running through vivid paints on an artist's canvas.

"And what will we find there?" Raymond asked impatiently.

"Our ticket home." The Ghost sounded confident, an attitude that he now found hard to share.

They pushed on downwards, and, through a break in the trees, he saw Hạ Long Bay. It was sitting there, the Bay and it's hundreds of islets, in a blissful silence. It was just as how he remembered it. The late dusk bathed the water in pink and orange, the rock formations like fingers. A flock of birds, like dots in the sky, flew overhead, singing. It was a painting come to life.

Later, after a blistering trek, they had reached the water's edge and his feet was surrounded with sand rather than grass. Night had replaced the dusk and the moon was full and bright so not everything was in complete darkness.

Even after hundreds of years, everything around him still felt oddly familiar. He had scouted along Hạ Long's coastline several times before.

"Do you remember all of this?" His Ghost asked, its small blue eye in front of him like a star blinking in the night sky.

"Most of it." Raymond knelt down and ran his fingers through the dim, moonlit sand. It flowed between his digits. It had been so long since he had touched sand that it felt almost alien. He looked up and saw the Ghost floating away from him.

"Over here." Its voice had fallen to a whisper. Raymond stood and followed his levitating companion. He was led to a small, metal bunker that was engulfed in a dune. It's door looked as if it had been forced open. "Eureka."

"I don't remember this being here," he breathed.

"You wouldn't; it was built long after you died." It began to scan the broken door and the ground around it with a holographic blue light that emanated from its central eye. "This is an entrance to a much larger base structure that extends out below the Bay: the Bay Vào Không Gian Facility. Abandoned during the Collapse, along with almost everything else."

A structure that sits beneath the Bay itself? He had never heard of feats such as this before now. There seemed to be much of history, or in his case, future events, that he needed to catch up on. All he could do was simply say "right."

The Ghost scanned the interior of the metal bunker beyond its doors. Its eye had become a torch that illuminated the blackness ahead. Sand had flowed inside, almost touching the ceiling at some points.

Suddenly, the Ghost spoke, rather alarmed. "We're not alone."

"What?"

"Fallen. They're here too. I thought they had left this area behind." It sounded grave.

Raymond entered the bunker and saw what the Ghost was referring to: a dagger half buried in sand that reflected the light of the Ghost. It's hilt was wrapped in some kind of faded cloth, its blade sharp. He picked the dagger up and held it in his hand. It was light. So light in fact that it felt as if he were holding a feather.

"A shock dagger. A dreg must've dropped that. Keep it handy, Guardian." The Ghost advised. "You'll need some kind of weapon if we run into Fallen here."

"And 'Fallen' are?" Raymond asked as he slipped the blade into his boot. He wasn't really sure if he wanted to know the answer.

"An enemy. They are a constant threat, and they're all over Earth, scavenging and killing." The Ghost looked on down the pitch black corridor ahead of them.

"Are they, well, human at least?"

"No."

Of course they weren't. "I wake up one day and I'm surrounded by aliens. Just my luck. Good thing I don't believe in aliens. At least none of them have tried to kill me yet."

"Yet." It said. Raymond looked at the Ghost with a sarcastic smile plastered on his face. "Let me see if I can find a light switch." It said finally.

He clambered over the ridges of sand that had flooded into the entrance of the corridor, following the small cone of light that radiated from the Ghost. The corridor was small and very enclosed. Raymond lay a hand on the wall to help guide him. He felt a chill travel through his palm. He ran his hand along the metallic walls as he followed his Ghost.

"Here we are." It began to scan a panel on the wall, and in almost an instant lights along the length of the corridor flickered to life. Some lights stayed dead, but many blinked dimly, casting lurid shadows around him. "Just follow me, Guardian."

They pushed on through the dying light of the metallic hall. He walked softly as the Ghost had advised. It said, or in Raymond's personal opinion, she said, that too much noise could attract 'unwanted attention'.

After a short, silent descent, the length of the hall had come to a stop. Another door stood ahead of them, except this one wasn't beaten in.

"Sealed from the inside," the Ghost began as she scrutinised over a control panel beside the door. "That means someone is here. Keep your wits about you Guardian; I don't think this will be a simple 'sneak in and get out' kind of mission."

He gestured towards the blade in his boot. "I'll need something a little more reliable than this if you're expecting trouble."

"Which I am." The Ghost finished her decryption of the door's codes, and it slid open soundlessly revealing what seemed to be a reception room with a large, and again, metallic, round desk. "We'll find something. They may have dropped more than just a dagger." She suddenly changed tack, "A little reminder: Fallen are dangerous so stick close to me."

"I'll try my best."

The reception room was largely bare as the circular desk in the room's center seemed to be the only thing present. The silver and grey floors shimmered in the room's overhead lighting as if it had been cleaned and polished recently.

Another doorway sat across from the desk on the opposite side of the room. His Ghost was already there, working her technical magic.

She spoke up, "They've done a good job at keeping anyone from following them in. Unfortunately for them, I am very good at breaking through security locked doors." She sounded pleased with herself as he headed to the door.

"Who are _they_ again?" He asked, even though he knew the answer.

"The Fallen. Or the deadly aliens. Whichever you prefer."

He sighed heavily and cracked his knuckles. "Right. The Fallen. I'll believe it when I see it."

The door slid open, and the first thing that greeted his eyes was disturbing and doubly terrifying. An alien, like the Ghost had said there would be, except this one was dead. It was slumped against a wall, it's four arms, _four arms_ , lay limp beside it. Two pairs of white eyes stared into nothing from behind its mask.

"Shit, that is not human," Raymond stuttered dumbly, staring with utter astonishment at the dead creature. "How is this real?"

"Fallen vandal. By the looks of things, the Security Safeguard Systems must still be online. They would have kicked in and fried this vandal before it could go any further." She looked up at him. "Do you believe me now about the deadly aliens?"

He just stood there, mouth agape, unable to find words. With a creased brow and an expression of pure disbelief he only said, "Are there others like it here, you think?"

"Most likely," his Ghost said rather nervously. "Grab its shock rifle. Do you think you can work it?" Her single eye followed him as he reached for the gun that lay beside the alien corpse.

Raymond curled his fingers around the grip of the alien weapon and held the heavy rifle in his hands. It was large and bulky; it was like no weapon he had ever seen before. Every feature of the weapon was otherworldly. It had a trigger which was familiar enough. That was a small relief among many uncertainties.

"I'll see what it can do." He aimed it and his eyes followed the sights. It felt uncomfortable and heavy, but he could hold it steadily enough. He understood why the weapon needed four arms to handle it. "Alright." He breathed in and out slowly through his nostrils and shook his head feeling foolish. "I'm as ready as I'll ever be."

The Ghost fiddled with the security systems, shut them down, and opened the final door.

He stepped through, his small companion floating close behind him. It was a huge open room, like a large train terminal. He looked above him where there were lights still flickering. The roof was a gigantic panel of glass that presented the waters of Hạ Long Bay above the structure. They really were below the Bay.

The wavering formations of the water reflected down into the large open space where he walked. Walls of glass and glistening metal sheets surrounded him. There were faded words printed on the surfaces and walls around him, all in Vietnamese. Instructions, bulletins, directions; they could be saying anything. They were words that no longer had meaning as there were no eyes to read them.

He kept his senses on constant alert so he could spot anything with four arms. Thankfully, there was nothing; just the sound of his own steady footsteps. That and the occasional hushed robotic flutter that could be heard when the Ghost's eye darted around the socket, scanning the surroundings for enemies or doorways.

Suddenly, he heard a clattering sound echo from across the terminal. He darted for a desk ahead of him and squatted behind it. His Ghost stayed close.

"They're here," she whispered.

He readied the weapon. He readied himself.

He was only used to firing a Winchester Model 70 sniper rifle and the occasional pistol, but nothing like this. He thought the Earth that he had come back to was alien enough.

A wolf-like howl cut through the air and sent shivers rippling through him. The calls of this new enemy made him tighten his fingers around the grip of the weapon until they turned white. He held his breath. His Ghost moved in closer to his face as he crouched in silence.

"There's one thing you need to remember with this weapon Guardian;" the Ghost murmured, "to fire it, you need to squeeze and hold the trigger. Don't tap it." She continued to look at him and blinked her eye. "Let's do this."

"You got it," he replied quietly. Adrenaline was pumping through him. He believed that he was either determined and brave or crazy and stupid. Either way, he was ready to shoot some aliens.

Another piercing alien roar penetrated Raymond's ears. Then there was silence. He was deathly still squatting behind the wooden desk. His ears were like radar sifting through the immediate area for any enemy sound waves.

There was nothing.

He silently began to move up from behind cover. His eyes then ascended just above the desk's surface, and that was when he saw it: an alien on an opposite balcony had him in its sights.

"Damn!" Without any thought, he jolted back down behind cover just as the alien's high-velocity projectile skimmed over his head and impacted the wall opposite him. Fallen voices began to holler. "Yeah, they know we're here."

His Ghost spoke quickly, "Wire rifle: it's essentially a Fallen sniper rifle, so be careful and stay out of its line of sight. It has to be charged before it fires, like yours, so you have more time to run between each shot."

"Why do the aliens get the snipers," he remarked facetiously as he began to move along behind the cover. He quickly peeked round the corner once he had stopped at the end. Clear. He leaped out of cover and sprinted to a wall just ahead of him. His Ghost darted through the air behind him. He threw himself behind the wall as another bolt of blue light flew past his head and buried itself in a pillar just across from him.

Raymond held the heavy shock rifle close to his chest as he pressed himself against the wall. His heart was pounding in his chest but he breathed as quietly as he could.

"Through that door." Ghost spoke ever so quietly.

He looked to his left and gingerly moved towards it. As he approached the glass door it automatically slid open, hissing quietly as it did so. He held up the weapon and looked down its sites as he stepped through the entrance. The corridor ahead turned to the left and ran along the edge of the large central room.

There was nothing ahead of him. There were west-facing windows along the left side of the corridor that looked over into the terminus. He sprinted along the length of the corridor towards the door at the end. It hissed open a little earlier than he had expected it to, but it wasn't opening for him, but for a vandal on the other side.

He and his Ghost ground to a halt. The four-armed creature held a wire rifle, and it was aimed right at him. Without a single thought, he leapt to one side, dodging another luminous blue projectile that streaked by, barely grazing him. As it shot by, it hummed as if it were electrically charged.

He sprinted at full pelt towards the enemy; it felt as if he was stronger and faster than he had ever been before, like new life was stirring inside of him. In a few short seconds, another round from the enemy rifle would leave a fresh hole in his chest; so he thought just as fast as his legs ran, and he hurled his weapon at the vandal, the chunky frame striking its chest. It reeled backwards, grunting, Raymond's shock rifle crashing to the ground. Before the armed six-limbed creature could regain its balance, he slipped the dagger out from his boot, grabbed the vandal by its upper left arm, and plunged the blade deep into its throat.

It dropped to its knees, and, instead of howling, it made a thin gurgling sound that signalled its demise. The blade stuck there in its flesh.

He was brimming with adrenaline and stepped back from the fresh corpse. "I killed one. An alien, I killed an alien. You're damn right," he said triumphantly.

"Great job!" His Ghost sounded rather relieved. "One threat down."

"You're damn right," he repeated quietly.

"Phaeton-class... quick, through here." Ghost flew out in front of him, leading him to a large, frosted, double glass door with a blue phoenix printed on its surface. The doors opened outwards automatically as they rushed towards it. He could hear movement as well as piercing alien voices from somewhere behind him as they passed through.

They were the predators and he was the prey. But prey can become predator.

Another hallway. He spoke between breaths as he ran, "What exactly are we trying to find?"

"A spacecraft to take us to the City. This will be the place to find one."

There was a new surprise with each word the Ghost spoke.

"A _spaceship.._." He said, astonished.

"The future's a great place, huh?" Ghost remarked.

The hallway came to a halt, and his Ghost continued to lead. "This is the last door, I promise. I'll seal it behind us to give us more time to escape from the Fallen."

They entered a long hangar with large mechanical arms reaching out above ship bays at points along either side. Control rooms along the length of the hangar overlooked the floor where he ran. He wondered how long the buttons and panels here had been gathering dust.

Ghost streaked by him, whirring off to the far end of the hangar. Every vehicle bay on either side of him were empty. Everything was gone. It looked as if the entire place had been abandoned a long time ago.

The sound of his Ghost's voice caught his attention. "Here!" She hollered from several metres ahead of him. "Bay A-19: I've found our ticket out of here."

He sped up the pace, and there it was. A ship. A spacecraft. It wasn't a hulking beast of a craft, but it was thin and sleek. It shone in the flickering lights of the hangar, glinting like a silver fish darting across the surface of a dawn-lit sea.

It was a fascinating piece of machinery. Clearly centuries more advanced than any kind of craft the 20th century had to offer.

"Holy hell... a spaceship."

"Essentially, yes. But it's been here for awhile, so it's very unlikely to posses the ability to break orbit and if we tried it would probably break apart. Luckily, we don't need it for that purpose right now."

He ran his hand along its faded silver hull and grinned. "Yeah. This'll do me just fine."

His Ghost abruptly rotated to face the door that she had previously sealed.

"What?"

"Fallen," she began frantically. "They must have a Servitor with them; they're overriding the lockdown on the door! Quickly, get in!"

"How do I-" Suddenly he felt a strange sensation wash over his body. His view of the wall in front of him began to skew and shift. He snapped his vision down to his hands. He was becoming immaterial, fading into blue light. He looked up to find that he was behind glass, in a hard seat, inside the silver ship.

"I'm getting too used to all the strange shit that's been happening since I woke up."

Ghost was hovering beside him while he sat in the pilot seat. "That's good."

He peered up out through the cockpit's window to see a large circular hangar door in the roof split into eight individual segments and peel back, revealing a coal black night sky above the facility. The solitary Moon was hanging in darkness by an invisible thread.

He turned back to Ghost. "You do know that I can't fly this thing, right?"

"I have the controls, Guardian. This floating ball knows what it's doing." That made him feel a little easier. The strangely human tone that Ghost possessed was reassuring enough.

The engines choked to life and the ship lurched into the air. Raymond's hands grappled onto anything around him that would keep him steady.

They lifted up through the open gap in the ceiling, drifting into the night. Landing lights on the ship illuminated the surface below. The hangar bay door had opened up a hole in the middle of the Hạ Long Bay waters. The Bay's surface parted and swelled below as the silver ship rose higher into the night's great expanse.

When the thrusters burst to life, sharp chills cascaded over Raymond's body.

In an instant everything around him became a blur. The Bay, as well as the carcass of Hạ Long City, disappeared behind him and his astounding ship. What Raymond thought would be his final resting place deep in the jungles of Vietnam became nothing but a memory.

He pinched himself, he had to, just in case he was dreaming some kind of odd, transcendent dream from beyond the grave.

Raymond was awake. He knew he was awake, revived, hundreds of years in the future.

He was very much alive; flying through the night like an eagle encased in glinting silver.

"Let's get you home, Guardian."

He and his Ghost settled down for the journey across the surface of Earth.


End file.
